Asking the right questions ... Choosing the future ....

How can we provide the right kind of support for the gifted individual as he or she moves into adolescence and begins to think of that adult life role? How do gifted students make these decisions?

Do we ask, what are you good at? What’s available? What will mean a good job with lots of money? No, the ordinary questions like these clearly won’t do. So what do we ask?

What gives me joy?

What intrigues me?

What absorbs me?

What enrages me?

What gives me the deepest satisfaction when I do it well?

What matters so much to me that I feel I must do it?

What do I do now that I can imagine still wanting to do when I am old?

What is my life direction?

As a gifted student finds answers to these questions, he or she is finding also those fields of ability that have the highest personal relevance for him or her, the field or fields which it will be truly satisfying to nurture and develop.

Furthermore, as we ask questions like these, we can begin to explore with the student an understanding of the meaning of terms like “satisfaction” and “fulfilment”, and we may find answers like these emerging from their own experience:

Being totally absorbed

Doing what is hard and working it out

A sense of achieving “the right word in the right place”

Bringing about change, making a difference for someone

And so we lay the platform for finding the right answers to these key questions…….